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New book celebrates 50 years of the Climatron
(by Kara Krekeler - November 25, 2009)
For nearly 50 years, visitors to the Missouri Botanical Garden have been able to visit a lush indoor tropical rainforest in the Climatron.
Next year, the 70-foot-tall geodesic dome will celebrate its golden anniversary, and the Garden is commemorating it with a new book, Missouri Botanical Garden Climatron: A Celebration of 50 Years.
The book is filled with archival and contemporary photos, a section of three-dimensional images and an essay about the structure’s history by Washington University architecture professor Eric Mumford.
Five years ago, Mumford wrote a book about modern architecture in St. Louis, which included a passage on the Garden’s geodesic dome.
“Like everyone else, I was familiar with it, and I’ve always liked the Climatron,” Mumford said, noting that he really didn’t have much more connection with the Garden than as an occasional visitor when he was asked to participate in the book project.
But when given the opportunity to study the greenhouse, Mumford jumped at the chance to learn more about it and R. Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome.
An architect and designer of prefabricated housing, Fuller came up with the idea for geodesic domes in the 1940s during a quest for energy-efficient designs, Mumford said. The dome, with a beehive support system and no interior columns, proved to be the most efficient shape, which Fuller planned on using for residential purposes.
In the early 1950s, Fuller’s idea began to catch on, gaining national attention as the Ford Motor Company became one of the first companies to commission Fuller to design a geodesic dome, in this case, a Plexiglas structure for the rotunda of its headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.
Around the same time, the Garden was struggling with an image problem and was having trouble bringing visitors through the gates.
“It had become kind of dowdy,” Mumford said. “The board wanted something big to draw back the crowds.”
So in the late 1950s, Garden director Frits Went began a plan to bring a new greenhouse to the Garden. Went contracted with St. Louis architecture firm Murphy and Mackey, who partnered with Fuller’s Synergetics engineering firm, to design the building, setting 4,000 pieces of triangular Plexiglas on a 40,000-square-foot aluminum honeycomb dome.
The Climatron opened to the public on Oct. 1, 1960, becoming the first geodesic dome to serve as a greenhouse.
“It was an instant success, it was immediately iconic,” Mumford said.
Visitors loved it, and so did architects. In 1976, the Climatron was named one of the 100 most significant architectural achievements in U.S. history.
Accolades aside, the Climatron didn’t function as Went initially intended. The greenhouse was originally meant to have four separate climate zones replicating tropical, Himalayan, Indian and Pacific Island environments. The computerized climate system proved to be too elaborate to create such diverse climates. Went had also hoped the building would serve primarily as a space for scientific research. Instead, it housed just one climate (as it does today) and almost instantly began to serve primarily as a visitor attraction.
That popularity has continued over the 50 years since it first opened, despite a two-year closure between 1988 and 1990.
In the late 1980s, a survey of the Climatron found it to have structural problems, forcing the closure of the building. One of the major problems was in the Plexiglas panes, which had yellowed and weakened over the years. Mumford said the triangular pieces were originally meant to be replaced every few years — in the late ’80s, the Climatron still had the panes from 1960.
But rather than tear down the popular attraction, Garden Director Peter Raven chose to replace the Plexiglas with 2,425 panes of heat-tempered glass.
“It’s interesting that Peter Raven decided to keep it, when it was found to be structurally unsound,” Mumford said.
Like many trends of the 1960s, geodesic domes had fallen out of fashion by that time. Today there are few that still exist, and even fewer being built, particularly as greenhouses. Mumford said that most architects these days see the Climatron as a historical building rather than an inspiration for design.
But the Climatron seems impervious to changing architectural fads, much like one of St. Louis’ other modern icons.
“It has always been seen positively, like the Arch,” Mumford said.
• Missouri Botanical Garden Climatron: A Celebration of 50 Years will be available at bookstores throughout the metro area on Dec. 1.
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